Shelter from the storm

As I write this, we are refugees.  We're currently at M's folks' place, where they have amazing luxuries like heat and electricity that are sadly lacking in our neck of the woods.  Last night Toronto got hit by a nasty freezing rain storm that coated everything in a thick layer of ice, ultimately causing severe power outages as ice-heavy tree limbs gave up the ghost and took out power lines as they came crashing down. 

We initially thought that we weren't getting hit as badly as meteorologists predicted, but as we were watching Saturday Night Live last night we started hearing crazy noises outside.  At first we thought it was just our garbage and recycling bins blowing around, but then we figured out that it was a combination of the BOOM of power transformers exploding and the C-C-R-A-A-C-K of tree branches tumbling into our yard.  The power flickered on and off all night, making sleep all but impossible (why oh why must smoke detectors make that shrieking beep every time they lose/gain electricity?) and we eventually lost it completely around 5am.  M and I took turns getting out of bed to see what had made the latest noise, hoping that our car wasn't being destroyed by branches falling from the large birch in our front yard.  Fortunately most of the damage seems to have been confined to the yard-side of the tree rather than the part that overhangs the driveway (as well as the power line connecting our house to the main electrical line).

 The view from our bedroom window this morning.  Poor birchy.

About 4am we both happened to be out of bed looking into our backyard when a gigantic limb fell off our neighbour's tree, which overhangs our yard.  It ended up crashing onto our shed, taking out a wire of some kind that runs from the back of the house to a main line above our back fence.  Strangely, this didn't end up resulting in a loss of power, so I have no idea if it's an electrical line or something else.  We've been avoiding it just to make sure, and wouldn't let Buddy out into the backyard on his own.  Unfortunately the Toronto Hydro phone line that you can call to report downed wires is totally out of commission due to call volume, so we still haven't been able to report it some 14 hours later.

Backyard view.  Cleanup's gonna be fun!

We hunkered down at home for the morning, hoping that we'd be one of the lucky ones to get our power restored relatively quickly.  Right now Toronto Hydro is saying that it could be up to 72 hours before full service is restored.  We wimped out somewhere around 3pm, when the temperature in the house hit 18 degrees (65 F) and we started fantasizing about hot food and coffee.  Although I was initially hesitant to head out on the roads for the 1.5 hour drive to M's parents' house, my cold feet eventually won out and we abandoned ship.  We had to re-route around a couple of huge tree limbs blocking the roads in our neighbourhood, but the main thoroughfares were actually pretty good travel-wise.  And of course, as much as this storm has made a hell of a mess, it's ironically very pretty as well.

View from the car as we got the hell out of Dodge.

Despite being displaced from our house, we're actually quite lucky in that we were planning on spending Christmas with M's parents at their place anyway so it's not like we have to reorganize some gigantic family get-together as I'm sure many Torontonians are doing right now.  And our municipal representatives are pretty on the ball, so I'm sure that things will be back up and running efficiently in no time.

 

Ladies and gentlemen, Mayor Rob Ford!

Scratch that.  We're fucked.